It was a beautiful morning. Soft rays of sun illuminated white washed walls of a neighborhood with tiny houses belted by flower beds. Roses blood red and sparkling yellow, white Cara lilies, curled petals of violet blue chrysanthemum and the tinkling bicycles bells of newspaper vendors completed the morning. It was a morning like any other- bright and promising- in the city of Oran. Oran was built facing the Arabar sea, one was usually lucky enough to sip the morning cup of coffee looking at soft sea green waves lapping the glittering white beach, from one's balcony.
The evenings in Oran were red. Setting sun splashed amber to the blue green waves and everything else. White walls acquired orange hue. Children frolicked in the seashore; their skin, covered in sand, sparkled like tiny diamond work on ivory silk. An angry earthy goddess danced along the roar when moon rose high up in sky and gage the wild sea goddess to its magnetic battle.
With several nudges from the said morning the beautiful people in the small city of Oran went about their day. The O'Hara's, who owned a textile shop, bicycled to work sharp at 10 in the morning. Senior Mr. Benet drove his car to the only school along with his daughters, he taught and they studied. Saleem Sinai, the rather odd looking fellow with a funny looking hat walked to his shop exactly five minutes after Mr. Benet drove by his house. Sinai's shop sold pickles- ripe eggplant pickled with choicest herbs was his special and was famous in the town. Ms. Eyre, the librarian had coffee and breakfast in the little cafe by the road before heading to the small district library. The people of Oran were happy, doing their job and earning their living. The small city tucked away in one corner of the vast world was held together by more than just mutual interdependence. It was happiness. The city didn't know sorrow, heartbreak, anger, disease or the despair of human existence. It was as if the small self sufficient town brought down a piece of paradise for itself where no evil existed.
Arnav woke up late. He blamed it on his big brother who left the city one fine day, thrusting responsibility of maintaining this whole city on him. Being a mayor in charge was not easy. It took up his nights to keep the white washed walls white and the smiles intact. His brother had told him, no matter what; never let those smile fade in the mist of curiosity. Curiosity was the bane of human existence. The inhabitants of Oran didn't need curiosity. And that is why Oran was self sufficient and suspicious of everything foreign. It was built to not let in change; its walls were high enough to keep out difference from the city and the hearts of its dwellers. No one was conceited, no one cheated, no one was unfair and no one knew they hadn't the ability to know otherwise. Arnav wondered why his brother had to leave the boundaries of this city when he gave everything up for it. Arnav had inkling certain things were beyond his understanding, but his brother was the wiser one. More fit to be in charge of the city's functioning. He had done what was necessary, no matter the cost. And he doubted if his brother's disappearance had to do anything with that cost. He had warned Arnav of the outside world and the treachery of humanity before leaving. And instructed him to not let in any outsiders. And Arnav had not, that is if you count Khushi out. She was a daughter of Oran who went missing twelve years ago and that made her a runaway but not an outsider. She had been the only one to have left before his brother, rather to have succeeded in leaving. Tales of Khushi - the one who left- became legends until she showed up at his door step, three days after his brother left. No one knew how she crossed the walls and and the sea. Twice.
"Arnav, love, you are late. This city won't run itself. Here is your coffee. Freshen up quick and comedown for breakfast. "
That was Khushi . His wife of three months.
----000----
Khushi sat contemplating. A hard bound book, its cover rusted from age, mocked her from the window seat decor. Her hands itched to pick it up but its mysteries scared her and fueled almost an indomitable curiosity at the same time. She remembered the warning it came with-
"Words will break and words will build. My child, let this gift from your old man be your blessing. But I must tell you secrets of a blessing should never be revealed to eyes of the innocent; else it turns into an irreversible curse.
Khushi had only this gift when she returned from land of the learned. The ones who built her bit by bit. She had reached them empty handed twelve years ago and they had given her one thing that Oran would never know. It was curiosity. She was a daughter of Oran but she felt her soul detached from everything Oran stood for. Peace but not freedom. Happiness but not knowledge. Craft but not creativity. Her curiosity had made her see the difference when she returned. She was convinced these things were mutually exclusive. But that didn't stop her from wanting both. She has to be the first in Oran who wanted more and hence the first who was unhappy in the city of happiness.
She reached for the book with trembling hands and sneaked out of her house. It was better if she kept it out of her sight. She entered the library which housed thousands of books and yet everyone read the same thing, because they were all copies of the same book. The book of Oran, they called it. She greeted Ms. Eyre who was busy matching each copy to its code and arranging them in numerical order. For Khushi the action seemed meaningless, bordering on ridiculous, since all the books are same books. What does it matter which order they are in? But she knew better than to point out the futility of it. It would let them know that she was different from the rest and that was not a good thing in Oran. She sneaked the book in one of the shelves in the farthest corner of library. No one would know the difference; people hardly came to this corner since they could read from shelves nearest to the tables and chairs. One good thing about a library full of the exact same book - you do not have to search.
She waited for Arnav as she prepared dinner. Today was her turn to do the cooking, everyone's responsibility was decided. The book of Oran made the rules for everything, even for household chores were distributed evenly among family members. No one knew who wrote the book and no one questioned. No one knew how to.
She would have to put up a facade of contentment when Arnav returned home. The same contentment and happiness that bound people of Oran together. Even Arnav- the one who looked over the city. But she could put him apart from the rest even if by a hairline amount of difference. How do you love someone if can't tell them apart from those you don't love? Or do you love everyone you come across because no one is any different from each other? Khushi wondered if everyone in Oran loved everyone. How a husband could tell his wife from other women except by her face and by what she did? Because everyone had the same opinion, same taste and same perspective of things. It did not make much difference if you are talking to your father or the adolescent girl walking her dog. Everyone sounded the same. The book of Oran took care of that.
She married Arnav because he was besotted with her appearance and because she had found the hairline amount by which he stood apart from the rest. She had fallen in love with him then. He had wondering if not questions. He had inkling of things that existed beyond the walls of Oran even if he did not want to know what they were. It was him who planted different kinds of flowers in sidewalks, brought from the wild, instead of just roses. No one thought much of it but she had seen his interest in variety. Even if it made up just a minuscule fraction of him. And she wouldn't find anything more even though she craved for it.
She knew it was all there was for her. She was the stranger in her own country. She was her own nemesis.
-------------------
Arnav sat in the balcony looking over the sea dance with violent passion, the moonlight reflecting off her curves. Two arms snaked around his shoulder from behind and locked on his chest. He smiled in the melting darkness of a moon lit night.
"Do you know why the sea dances?
"Why?
"For the moon. She is slave to his wishes.
"Slave?
Khushi laughed lightly lowering her face to Arnav's.
"Yes. What power she has over her own heart? She loves him so.
Arnav tugged at her hand and she obliged. She sat astride his legs and slid her hands around his neck. Arnav rested his forehead against hers and breathed in contentment.
"Where did you learn to speak like that? It makes my heart feel things I do not understand.
But she did. It was the ache of not understanding that made Arnav's heart heavy. He never asked anything about her past. It was a rule to accept, because everything was right. Wrong didn't exist in Oran. But he couldn't understand her tongue even when they spoke the same language.
She kissed him. It was the only way she knew when words were futile. His hands glided up from her waist to her back. He pushed her closer to his heart. But it was not enough. She was a goddess and he her slave.
- ---------------------------------------------------
Days passed and slowly, relentlessly thickening mist of chaos hung in the city of happiness, like a curtain that brushed the clear world opaque. The city didn't know when it started or how. Was it the day Ms. Eyre's knees buckled and she crumbled, crying her heart out right in the middle of a street that she walked everyday to work? Or was it the day young Ms. Benet woke up from her slumber breaking out in cold sweat that had the stench of fear? She had fallen ill two days after and hadn't recovered since. Saleem Sinai, the pickle maker and seller, had tried climbing the wall and when he was brought home by search parties he chanted incoherent mantras of breaking free. He had been attempting his climb since then, everyday. And he couldn't be restrained because there was no prison in Oran. When there was no deviance, there were no prisons.
One fine morning found Mr. O'Hara painting the white washed walls of his house sky blue. He wanted his walls to look like the sea, he had told his daughter Scarlett. And Scarlett had asked 'why'.
Things stranger than what was beyond the walls kept the inhabitants of Oran awake at night. They felt things they didn't understand. It drove some to madness of cheating, lying and finally, killing. It was the day when Mr. Heathcliff, the bachelor who earned his living by renting rooms, killed Edgar Linton and his wife in their bed, Khushi knew it was time to tell her husband what she had done.
-----------------------------------
Arnav was lost in the mist that descended upon his city and his heart. He didn't understand when his wife told him about a book she had hidden in the library. There was only one book and that was the book of Oran. But nothing was real anymore, not even himself. It was impossible to imagine a book where different words were written. But then it was impossible to think of sky blue walls instead of white either. So Arnav went in search of the book with his wife accompanying him. It was not in the library where Khushi had kept it and there was only one person, other than Khushi, who could have known about its existence. The realisation took them to Ms. Eyre's home. She was cooking, humming a tune they had never heard before. She looked... different.
Khushi asked her about the book and she gained a lie for an answer. Ms. Eyre told them she knew nothing of any such book. Khushi mused how quick Ms. Eyre had learned to lie convincingly. Arnav couldn't tell the difference between a well told lie and the truth. But Khushi could. And she pressed on.
"I knew it was you who had kept the book there. I saw you keeping it. But I thought it was the Book of Oran. So I didn't immediately look but I had to eventually. I knew you wouldn't know how to keep the books in numerical order, which I now think is futile really since all books are one book. How does it even matter? But I hadn't thought about it then, so I went to keep it in its right place. It didn't have a code and I opened it so I could put a code, according to its year of printing. But the publication date was mixed up. It went centuries back than the first publication of book of Oran. So I read it. It was not the one book at all. It seemed to tell me something that I knew but didn't. I thought I was dreaming but dreams rarely venture into the unknown. And I was not even aware that anything beyond my own knowledge exists. How limited I am, I never realized. Until, until you gave me the book. The best books... are those that tell you what you know already*.There is so much to know, so much to see and so much to learn. It is so exciting to live in a world this vast. But the realization that I am too limited to live all of the vastness is what makes me feel so small. I do not know what I feel at times but Khushi I am going to experiment. Learn new things. Did you know you can create your own music just by humming? How wonderful is that?
Khushi knew she needed to get the book back before it destroyed the city. Jane had told her she couldn't keep it to herself when everyone else seemed like fools after reading a book other than another which she thought was the only book that ever existed. She lent it Saleem Sinai.
Arnav felt sick. Nothing made sense. What was real and what was not? Was he real? Was the past, Oran's past just a construct, controlled by something greater than all of the Oran together? What was reality? After all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?*
Arnav's mind swarmed with questions when he gained the ability to ask questions finally. What he had seen in past few months was something that didn't exist a year back. Not in his mind at least.
Arnav let Khushi take him to Saleem Sinai who seemed adamant on breaking down the walls protecting Oran. Is it protection that keeps you from freedom? Sinai had asked. Arnav didn't have the answer. Neither did anyone.
Saleem confessed to have passed it on to young Ms Benet who hadn't been able to take the wisdom of the book well. It made her dream of morbidity of this existence that in turn made her want to not exist. It made her see the sufferings of a human soul and pointlessness of that suffering. Life looked like the moth that couldn't help but burn because the flame was too becoming to resist.
Khushi understood finally how blessings turned into a curse when its secrets were revealed. She couldn't find the book. It was lost, so was the city of happiness.
Arnav fell ill. Khushi nursed him, blurring the differences of night and days. He kept telling her not to worry because he finally knew. But he never told her what it is that he knew. He couldn't see the walls of Oran being torn down, brick by brick, with his eyes. He smiled when Khushi told him.
Khushi had wanted more. Or rather she wanted the ability to want more. But she didn't know the price would be this heavy. She saw sadness and light seeping in through the cracks of ignorance, she saw violence of war and freedom to rebel, she saw insatiable hunger in everyone and she saw them create new things everyday even while knowing the futility of creation. There were now travelers who sought to have the world at their feet, and foreigners who traded their souls for a moment of peace. Oran was broken down and rebuilt. Arnav stayed in his sick bed while the world revolved in its axis. Khushi had inherited the mist of chaos inside her from the ruins of a city that once knew no evil. The mist clouded her vision and she could only see what she had done through the hazy picture and Arnav's frail figure. She waited for him to get better, and then they can leave this city and go to the place she came from. The learned will know how to cure her eyesight.
---------------------
It was a beautiful morning like any other, full of hope. People of Oran went about their chores.
Ms. Benet had succumbed to her illness and her father now sits on his desk writing a memoir. Saleem Sinai had traveled cities and came back to take Arnav's place. Since the people needed a ruler. And they chose him. Ms. Eyre was still the librarian but now she did more than coding the same books which were just one.
----------------
Khushi helped Arnav to the balcony where he liked to sit and look at the sea. The sea was the only thing that didn't change. And Khushi held onto this constant. Everything else was momentary.
"Khushi?
"Hmm?
"What do you see?
"I see endless blue, and diamonds blinding my eyes. No diamond emits such light. I see the sun in the waves and that's what blinds me. I see the fisherman's boat. Their rib bones are so prominent. If I was could see better I could count them. I see the tall merchant boats and the port faraway. I can't see it but I am sure there will be gentlemen with expensive hats swarming the port.
"Khushi?
"It's entirely my fault. I should never have..
"You know what I see? I see hope. Hope for something more. Something better. In the faces of fishermen who would sail away to untested waters because there was always hope. In the tall merchant boats where the buyers would look for fresh starts and the sellers who would buy gifts for their wives on the way home with the money they would earn. Because they hope for happiness on the faces of those whom they love. Khushi , I know now, that there is despair, there is more evil than we can imagine in existence but there is also hope. And I hope for your happiness, as much as you hope to nurse me back to health. Do you understand me Khushi?
Khushi did. She understood him without the bridge of language. And she was sure he had finally realized the futility of words too when it came to understanding her. And she knew she could now prepare for their long journey ahead, together. Because there was always hope.
---
See, I told you, this is one long string of nonsense. But if both our kinds of nonsense click or if this one made you think, then do leave me a note. It is the most prized treasure for those who want to share their thoughts, through stories, through words, though colors or anything that speak to this world of ours.
Indian Mythology
Hindi TV Shows
Cricket
44